Thursday, April 9, 2015

Bad News

"Major broadcast and cable news networks are failing in their coverage of the transgender community, prioritizing sensational depictions of transgender people while ignoring important transgender stories..."

Media Matters tracked transgender coverage on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo and Univision during January and February 2015 and the results are disturbing. Instead of concentrating on substantive transgender issues, the networks preferred to concentrate on Bruce Jenner rumors, Chelsea Manning's hormone therapy and the like.

It's no wonder that we have such a poor public image and are being locked out of bathrooms throughout the USA! (By the way, it's no surprise that the big networks practically ignored the bathroom legislation issue.)

And transpeople were seldom invited to be part of the discussion to speak for themselves. "As GLAAD has noted, 'transgender people are the experts to talk about transgender people.' The absence of trans individuals makes it easier for networks to create negative, misleading, or dehumanizing depictions of transpeople with impunity.

In those rare cases that transpeople were able to speak "about their experiences and community, the impact they had on the tone and content of media coverage was nothing short of transformative."

3 comments:

Funny you show write about this today...Yesterday I was contacted by a local TV station to talk about our conference on April 25 where you are doing a workshop.(that was the carrot) and also to talk about Bruce Jenner (that was the stick, or in this case the stickler).I told the producer that I wound not comment on Jenner's journey but I will talk about what Jenner will face going trough transition.Now the ball is in their court and the producer is suppose to contact me if that is OK

I suppose it is one more example of the news phrase "if it bleeds...it leads". The other concern is that I do not think that anyone has a clue about our numbers or where many of us may be on the T spectrum. There seems to remain somewhat of a morbid curiosity about people who will go to the lenght of surgical alteration to achieve gender peace but there is little news value in a closeted or semi-closeted T person who dons the attire of the other gender on an occasional basis but lives the rest of his or her life presenting as their birth gender. We are the 'numbers' in the gender universe but by and large we are mundane, simple, boring, everyday people who when we get out and about our goal is to pass or blend or simply be accepted as regular folks. We do not even have the panache of being fabulous as would apply to a drag queen. While some French may proclaim 'viva le differance' for many of us the most we can muster is viva the mundane.Pat